In case anyone’s suffering a burst of Invisible Adjunct nostalgia, here’s a story about bright-eyed young things being lured into expensive an time-consuming graduate programs with unrealistic hopes of rewarding employment at the far end, and here’s the first rumblings of discontent from “the academy”. Yup, and pace a lot of grass-is-greener talk by commentors on the old IA site, MBA programs are subject to more or less exactly the same supply and demand economics as the fine arts brigade. I would be an avid reader, btw, of an “Invisible Associate” site if a lowly MBA-grunt at a managment consultancy were to set one up to gripe about the vagaries of consultant life and the difficulty of getting on the partner track. But I don’t think there is one … yet.
{ 9 comments }
Arthur Work 06.08.04 at 4:49 pm
The CrookedTimber blogroll includes a blog by business professor Michael Watkins, although he has quit blogging. He used to complain about the school a lot, but from the perspective of an academic.
The many, many tears shed in the blogosphere when InvisibleAdjunct shut down suggest that academics are too self-centered. It was a good blog, and I’m sorry the woman who wrote it couldn’t get the job she wanted, but from the commentary you’d think this situation was unique to universities. There are millions of people who feel stifled in their careers, who think they should make more money and have greater prestige than they do, who long for a better job. It’s not just college professors.
Matt Weiner 06.08.04 at 5:33 pm
Yebbut, the fact that millions of people feel stifled in their careers doesn’t make it any better that many academics feel the same way. And it’s only natural that academics will worry most about the job situation of academics–we don’t have to be any more self-centered than anyone else for that.
burritoboy 06.09.04 at 12:26 am
Yep, Pfeffer’s right in what his article concludes. But, there’s also issues he doesn’t explore naturally growing from his essay. The major one being: why, if MBA programs don’t seemingly add much measurable value, are the top-end ones so in demand?
I think that Podolny’s work, whom Pfeffer mentions in his essay, hints at what is going on (and what most business students at the top-end schools know quite well already): the MBA, like the BA, has no technical function within the corporate system. By technical, I mean, as in learning any specified body of work or being measurably superior to some other proposed course of education.
What both degrees actually seem now to do (at least in the corporate setting) is symbolize the graduate’s social standing, class, social capital or, (tipping hat here to Podolny), their social status.
The remaining open questions once we realize this are fairly interesting and broad in their implications: i.e., the assumption, from 200+ years of thinking, is that the modern economy would grow increasingly more rational and more technocratic and more meritocratic. Instead, the business community seems to be creating what seem to be highly artificial tribal rituals that seemingly are more driven by excluding potential talent rather than including potential talent.
Which flies in the face of a lot of thinkers, from Weber to Montesquieu to the neoclassical economists, etc.
Tom T. 06.09.04 at 12:49 am
I can’t give you Invisible Associates, but I can point you toward Greedy Associates, the message boards for the complaints and problems of young law firm associates. It doesn’t quite strike the same erudite tone of Invisible Adjunct, however.
John Quiggin 06.09.04 at 7:28 am
I had a short go on the general uselessness of MBAs in one of my earliest posts, and I’m glad to see the point being made again.
Given that there’s likely to be a screening function associated with gaining entry to an MBA, the evidence (no signficant difference in earnings or performance from non-MBAs) suggests that the programs produce negative value-added.
Another Damned Medievalist 06.09.04 at 7:21 pm
There are millions of people who feel stifled in their careers, who think they should make more money and have greater prestige than they do, who long for a better job. It’s not just college professors.
Yes, but there are a couple of differences — many people who pursue academic careers are encouraged to do so (or were 10-20 years ago) with the assurances that there would be positions for those of us who were any good. The job market has changed dramatically, and the huge amounts of time and effort spent on getting those degrees might better have been spent elsewhere. Also, unlike many other career paths, academia, especially the teaching part, is done best by those who really have a vocation in the truest sense. Most academics aren’t in it for the money.
As for the MBA, I just don’t get it. The whole idea of it, that is. It seems to me that the purpose of an MBA has little to do with employability, and less to do with actual managerial skills. What exactly is “business” anyway? One still needs to learn the ins and outs of particular fields and institutions, and that only happens on the job. Makes, you wonder, though — most people who go to grad school on a PhD track are at least partially funded, but sacrifice a great deal of their personal lives (in terms of living standards, relationships, postponing “adult” life) in order to be qualified to do what they love. MBA students are willing to spend a hefty amount of dosh from their own pockets to get a degree that doesn’t even guarantee them a foot in the door. Is this the kind of thinking you want running businesses?
Arthur Wouk 06.09.04 at 8:36 pm
“job market has changed dramatically, and the huge amounts of time and effort spent on getting those degrees might better have been spent elsewhere.”
Again, not unique to academia. Look at the engineering job market sometime. Ups and downs all the time. A field that looks to be a guaranteed living (not to get rich, but to be middle class) one year can be glutted 5 or 10 years later. (I used to be an environmental engineer, which went from hot to cold in the 1990s, so I’m a little bitter, but I now see this happens in many fields more and more.)
dsquared 06.10.04 at 8:21 am
What exactly is “business†anyway?
In my case, it was; enough finance theory to get by, enough law to get by, bits and pieces of industrial economics, bits and pieces of sporadically useful but not very rigorous theory of organisations, business French, plus a ton of advanced finance options taken by those of us on the course with no social skills. It’s possible to learn a lot of interesting things at a business school, although I agree that this is not a popular choice among those who attend them.
burritoboy 06.10.04 at 4:39 pm
ADM,
Well, no, you’re a bit mistaken. Pfeffer ran his study on MBA schools as a whole, and they simply don’t function as a unified whole (in the way that medical schools do, for example). There are several tiers of schools. Each tier caters both to a different set of students and a different set of employers. The bottom tiers cater to a population of part-time students (whose tuition is usually at least partially paid for by their employers)and foreign students who want to emigrate to the US. The middle tier is occupied mostly by public universities who track mostly local students to the large local corporations. Since the middle tier is largely public, the cost to those students isn’t extraordinary and the payoff usually is ok. The top tier of schools tracks students with large social capital into consulting firms and investment banks. It’s only at this level where US students are really paying large amounts of fees, for a hopefully large return.
While the degree is rarely technically required (again, as against medical schools or law schools), it serves different tribal functions for each class of student. In some circumstances, it can be close to required. For many subsets of students, it IS required in a realistic sense.
By the way, ADM, it’s actually a misconception that business students go out and work in large corporations (i.e., manage lots of people). At the top tier, most graduates actually work in comparatively tiny advisory firms (whether consulting firms or financial advisory firms). In fact, they generally try not to manage large numbers of people but rather try to manage large amounts of capital.
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